


My words, like silent raindrops fell

by prufrocks



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Murder, Mystery, Slurs, Villainization of major character, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:36:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrocks/pseuds/prufrocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"On a dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, one light shines from the corner office of the 12th floor of the Acme Building... Jane Crocker, private eye."</p><p>A mysterious poisoning death, some blackmail-worthy photographs, and a police detective transferred from Alternia's legislative force- at this rate, Jane Crocker will never be able to take a vacation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My words, like silent raindrops fell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orange_yarn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_yarn/gifts).



It was a dark and stormy night. Jane Crocker sat at her desk, looking over old case files. The lamp on the desk was flickering, and flashes of lightning from the window behind her illuminated the door to her office. The radiator clicked and rumbled on, as the church clock down the street chimed nine times.

It was cold.

The buzzer for the front door rang, startling her out of her reverie. She let who ever it was in. It was either a client, or a wrong buzz; it was no problem to her. All the other offices would be dark. If someone wanted to visit, she wouldn’t turn them away.

She adjusted her sweater and lifted her cold coffee to her lips. Late nights were no stranger to her, especially after a long case. Jane had just spent six weeks trailing a fugitive who called himself Jack Noir, a criminal long forgotten by the law, who’d done hard time for connection to a stabbing years ago, broke out of prison, and hadn’t been heard from since. After a grueling hunt and a climactic shootout that sent him to the hospital and then back to the jailhouse, she was ready for a break. A vacation, of sorts. She flipped through the case, remembering smoking him out in a dark abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city, her .45 and 100 feet the only thing standing between her and a bad night.

There was a knock on the door.

“It’s open,” she called, hunching forward and reaching for her pistol just in case.

It was a dame, a blonde one, dark lipstick and blonde hair both awry. There were tear tracks down her face, and she was unsteady in her stilettos. 

“You’re Crocker, I presume?” she asked, a soft hiccup after her words breaking the tight air.

“Private eye. How can I be of service?” Jane waved her hand towards the empty chair across from her. The dame sat down.

“I’ve got a case for you, if you’re willing...” She trailed off apprehensively.

Jane sat back in her chair. She liked taking breaks between cases, but the dame seemed hard-hit and she could use the money. “Depends on the case, Miss--”

“Lalonde. Roxy Lalonde.”

Ah. One of the famous Lalonde women. Jane might have known. The hair and the lipstick might have given it away. Everyone in town knew a Lalonde or two, authors and socialites famous for their penchant for liquor and for disappearing into reclusive periods of silence to write their overwrought and, frankly, semi-pornographic novels. Roxy Lalonde had married a local eccentric multimillionaire just last year, moving from one excessively sized house to another but otherwise not changing in the slightest.

Now, however, she looked like a shell of the Lalonde she had been.

Curiosity was going to kill this cat one day, Jane knew, but she let her rising inquisition get the best of her.

“What can I do for you, Miss Lalonde?”

Lalonde stared at her, hope blossoming in her violet eyes. She pulled a newspaper clipping out of her pocketbook.

“My husband was found dead at the dinner table last night by our maid. Poison. The media got hold of this morning and they know a scandal when they smell one. I’m the most prominent suspect, of course. Everyone knows it was a marriage of convenience, and he certainly did have a lot of money.”

“You want me to clear your name?” Jane took the paper, eyes flicking over the headline-- _Prominent Multimillionaire Dead of Poison in Home: Is Drunk Wife to Blame? Probably--_ and looked back up at her client. Lalonde had a hard look in her eyes, now.

“I don’t care about my name. I just want you to know that I didn’t do it. I want to know who did. And I want that bastard to pay.”

Jane raised an eyebrow. “I thought the two of you hated each other. That’s what the tabloids all seem to say, that is.”

Lalonde smiled at that. “Oh, I hated him all right. As much as one can hate your closest confidante. Yes, we were nasty, we fought a lot, we certainly didn’t want to be with each other in the first place, but he was truly my only friend. A hard man to live with, but an even harder man to live without, that Jake English.”

A quiet calm descended over the room. Jake English. That name stirred some deep memory deep inside her, but Jane squashed it down and focused. Jane stared at Lalonde for a long minute, then read through the article once more. “Well, Miss Lalonde, consider me hired. I’ll mail you a bill at your current address. Now I’m going to need all the facts you have.”

It was a late night indeed.

\---

Two days later, Jane was standing in the rain outside the English mansion, frustrated and wet. She had gone over the evidence countless times, and it all pointed to two conclusions: English’s evening meal had been poisoned, and someone had crawled out the window of the dining room at some point on the day of the murder. Other than that, the trail of evidence was as cold as an iceberg. 

Something smacked the back of her knees, and she turned, about to tell off whatever kid had done it.

It wasn’t a kid.

A troll in a police detective’s outfit was standing behind her, the coat’s stiff collar turned up against the rain. In her hands was a long white cane with a silver handle that looked suspiciously like a dragon. She wore no hat, probably due to the two sharp horns sticking out of her mess of black pointy hair. Her eyes were hidden behind red sunglasses and her grey lips were parted in a grin to reveal razor-like teeth. The badge on her coat read Terezi Pyrope.

“Yes?” asked Jane, already dreading this. She preferred to work in solitude, in contact with her client but away from police interference, which was why she rarely took on murder cases. The police in this city were a blundering force at best, but they sure did know how to get in the way.

“You’re the private eye,” Pyrope said.

“And you’re the police detective,” Jane responded.

Pyrope’s grin widened. “That is correct!” She tapped her cane on the ground. “Jane Crocker, I presume.”

“You know me?” Jane raised an eyebrow. She’d never met this troll before in her life. She would remember a face like that.

“I’d be pleased to make your acquaintance,” Pyrope said. “You did the force a huge favor last week, you know.”

“Jack Noir? Didn’t seem like the force cared too much about him before I got involved, I have to say.”

Pyrope’s smile faltered a bit at that. “Well, starting today, I’m going to see to it that we take more care with our mysteries.” She held out a thin hand. Jane took it after a moment’s hesitation. “Terezi Pyrope, visiting detective. On hire from the Alternian legislacerator’s force. Here to turn this shoddy police detecting around.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Jane said. 

The Alternian legislacerators were a terrifying bunch. Pledging their lives to the law, they prayed to justice as their god and were known to go after criminals like bloodthirsty hounds. How this city had managed to secure one to clean up their detective force, Jane couldn’t say. 

“I’d be happy to work with you on this mission,” Pyrope said, “as long as you agree that the end goal is to uphold the law by bringing the truths of the matter to light, no matter how painful those truths can be.”

“Truth is often painful. What do you mean?”

Pyrope leveled her gaze at Jane, and that’s when Jane noticed- the troll was blind. The sunglasses hid them well, but behind the specs her eyes were blank red unseeing canvasses. Her other senses must have worked on overdrive to compensate, Jane thought. 

“They called me Blind Justice, back on Alternia,” Pyrope said, seeming to read Jane’s thoughts. “I don’t care if your client is a famous author, socialite, close friend, whatever. A lot of the signs are pointing to her as the culprit, and if that’s true, it’s straight to the slammer she goes.”

Jane stared straight into Pyrope’s unseeing eyes. “I know that,” she said. “I’d just like to get all the facts first before I accuse someone of murdering her husband.”

Pyrope’s face broke out into a grin again. “That’s what I like to hear. Come on, Crocker, this seems like it’ll be the start of a great partnership,” she said, grabbing Jane’s arm in a vicelike grip and pulling her towards the mansion.

\---

Working with Terezi Pyrope was strange business. By the time a week was out, the two had become strangely close. Their personalities clashed like oil and water. Pyrope had no notion of personal space, and Jane tended to be withdrawn while working, but somehow the two managed to get on as friends. The case was coming along as well- with Jane’s eyes and Pyrope’s strange methods of collecting evidence (a lick of a windowsill here, a cheek pressed up against a cabinet there) the two had managed to narrow down the murder to four points:

1\. The murderer was known to the household staff, for they were able to get into the house and mess with the food supply without raising suspicion.  
2\. The murderer was likely not the maid, for she had been out of town the night prior and all of the day of the murder.  
3\. The murderer had probably placed the poison in the ingredients for the stew the day prior, and this tampering had gone unnoticed until Mr. English’s face dropped into his bowl.  
4\. The murderer had stationed themself outside the dining room, slipped in to make sure English was truly dead, and then absconded out the window as they heard the maid coming down the hall.

If Lalonde had committed the murder, then why would she have absconded out the window? That was the question that had kept the two detectives up for the past several nights, sitting together in Jane’s office, Jane in the desk chair and Pyrope sprawled out on the cot that Jane kept for emergencies. It was truly a mystery.

Late one night Pyrope had withdrawn to the precinct downtown to collect a memo when the telephone rang. Jane answered on the second ring, staring out the window at the drunks passing by below.

“You’ve reached Jane Crocker.”

“Jane!” hissed the voice on the other end. “It’s Lalonde. There’s someone in my house. I think he’s come back for me.”

“English?”

“No, you dolt, whoever killed him! He let himself in. He let himself in.”

“How do you know it’s not one of your staff?”

“He let himself in through a window, Jane. I heard it open.”

Jane stood up, papers that had been resting on her lap flopping gently to the floor. “Where are you? Are you somewhere safe?” 

“I’m in my closet in my bedroom on the second floor. Hurry, Jane, I think he’s here to kill me. Or for the money, I’m not sure, but either way I’m dead.”

Jane pulled her coat on. “I’m on my way.” She dropped the phone into the cradle and flew out the door.

\---

The cab pulled up to the corner where the English mansion stood, and Jane threw some notes at the driver. “Keep the change,” she said breathlessly, sprinting out of the car. 

She spotted the open window on the ground floor, the same window as the one the murderer had left through. The house was quiet as she poked her head inside. There was no sign of anyone in the dining room. Jane crawled through the window, being careful not to make much noise, and drew her pistol. 

A rustling came from the hallway, and she padded across the room. A shadowy figure was making its way up the grand staircase. Jane waited until it passed from her view, and followed it, gun out in front of her like a rosary.

When she was halfway up the stairs, a bloodcurdling scream rang out from above her, and she dropped all pretense of silence and ran the rest of the way up.

A tall, wild-haired blond man was holding Lalonde in a headlock, gun pressed to her temple. Lalonde struggled, grabbing at his hands with her own, pummeling his stomach behind her. “Tell me where he left it,” the man barked at her, “or you go the same way as him!”

“Stop in the name of the law!” Jane commanded, cocking her pistol. The man looked up, nearly dropping Lalonde, then shifting her in front of him to use as a human shield.

“Don’t shoot!” Lalonde cried, ceasing to struggle.

“Who are you?” Jane kept her gun leveled at the man’s face, praying he wouldn’t off Lalonde and run.

“None of your business who I am,” he said, digging the gun into Lalonde’s temple.

“Shut the hell up, Strider,” Lalonde said with a hiccup. “Jane, he’s my cousin Dirk Strider, I don’t know how I didn’t see it before, he’s always been jealous of me, he loved Jake but Jake never loved him and the only way we could placate him was with-”

“Shut up,” growled Strider, tossing Lalonde to the ground. He aimed his gun at her chest. “It was supposed to be you downing that poison that night, but I guess it’s fitting it was him. If I couldn’t have him-” He cocked the gun. “Then no one can.”

Lalonde started to sob. “You can have it, you can have all of them, they’re upstairs with the other treasures, we never meant to keep them from you.”

“I’ve decided I don’t particularly care about them anymore,” Strider said. 

“Care about what?” Jane asked, trying to keep the conversation flowing. She figured as long as the two kept talking, they weren’t going to kill each other, giving her more time to find a way to secure Strider and get the cops down here.

“Why would I tell you? You’re just going to shoot me, or arrest me,” Strider said, aiming a kick at Lalonde’s ribs.

“Hey! No kicking. You don’t have a human shield anymore, Strider, so why don’t you put down your gun and tell me what you’re talking about.”

Lalonde looked up at her with unveiled adoration in her eyes. “Thanks, Janey,” she said.

“Alright. Strider, drop the gun.” He did so, a look of reproach on his face. “Lalonde, off the floor.” She picked herself up, dusting off her dressing gown and shooting daggers with her eyes at her cousin. “Now, where did you say these treasures were?”

“Up in the attic, on the third floor,” Lalonde said. 

“Strider, you first.”

“How do you know I won’t run?” he said, as Jane kicked his gun across the room.

“Because if you do, you should know that I’m a very good shot. Now, out the door you go,” she said, marching him forwards. “Lalonde, stay behind me. And explain.”

Lalonde spoke first as they crossed the threshold of the master suite, starting for the hallway. “He’s been blackmailing us for ages- or Jake at least, anyway. The two of them had an affair when they were younger and Jake broke it off, but poor Dirk couldn’t handle it, and seeing his lover with me drove him to bleeding us dry of Jake’s fortune. There are pictures, see, and a single one could ruin any of our reputations, since this city isn’t quite as progressive as it would like to think, especially when you’re of our social standing. We have the pictures. We have all the pictures. We have the negatives. And we were going to keep them locked away with our jewels and our priceless possessions. We would never have let those get out, Dirk, you have got to believe me!”

Strider turned around at that, his face contorting into a mask of rage. “And how could I believe an alcoholic bitch like you, _cousin_?” he spat.

Jane looked back at Lalonde, watched her face fall, and then--

“Janey! Look out!”

From somewhere deep in his clothing Strider had pulled another pistol, cocked it, was aiming straight at Lalonde, and Jane had no time to react but to push her out of the way as he fired--

and three bodies crashed to the floor. 

Standing behind Strider was Pyrope, her own gun drawn, and he clutched his side as he rolled over and looked at the unfamiliar troll above him. 

Jane helped Lalonde to her feet, but it was no use: a quiet “Dirk” escaped her mouth as she fainted dead away. Jane caught her, lowered her to the ground; a sharp pain in her side made her look down, at the growing bloodstain on her shirt; just a graze, but still serious. 

Pyrope was shouting at Strider, her face angrier than Jane had ever seen it. “Why did you do it? Why did you do it!” she repeated, spitting into his face as he bled out on the ground.

Lalonde gave a groan, and Jane knew she would survive, but her own vision was getting a little hazy. “Pyrope!”

Pyrope ignored her, grabbing Strider’s collar and hoisting him up. “Why did you do it?!”

“Pyrope! Terezi!”

Terezi turned to face her, noticed the red between Jane’s fingers, and dropped Strider to the ground. She took a deep breath and sniffed the air. “He hit you!”

“Just barely, but I need-- attention--” Jane took two steps towards her and dropped to the ground. The pain was growing.

Within moments she was being cradled and carried down the stairs, and she fell into a hazy, painful semiconscious state as they moved. Terezi smelled nice.

\---

She awoke in a hospital bed, the pointy figure of Pyrope hovering over her.

“Is it over?” Jane asked, her voice weak from several days of disuse.

Pyrope raised her eyebrows. “It’s been over, yes. Lalonde’s name has been cleared. Strider passed away that night, and the pictures mentioned were destroyed. Everything’s back to normal.”

Jane smiled. “Too bad we didn’t solve it.”

“We got close,” Pyrope said, although they both knew that was a lie.

“And you?”

Pyrope was quiet for a minute. “I’ve been asked to return to Alternia. Too much activity here for a legislacerator barely out of law school.”

Jane’s face fell. “When do you leave?”

“I thought about it for a while, while you were out,” Pyrope said, “and I rather think--”

“Yes?” Jane asked, not letting her hopes get up.

“Well, blind justice is useful anywhere, isn’t it? So I thought I might stay here for a little while, get to know this city, see if I can help... tidy the streets up.”

Jane smiled. “I did enjoy working with you.”

“And I, you, Jane,” Pyrope said, licking her lips.

“So you’re staying.”

“The cot in your office is far to comfortable for me to have even considered leaving,” Pyrope said.

Jane laughed, then stopped abruptly as the stitches in her side pulled. “Thank you, Terezi,” she said, grabbing for the troll’s hand.

Terezi grinned her famous grin.

“And that reminds me, Crocker, we have another case.”

“Already?! I’m still in a hospital bed.”

“Well, yes, but blind justice never sleeps, does it?”

Jane would never get a vacation at this rate.


End file.
